There but for Grace by Ten
by Babyverse Krewe
Summary: AU Babyverse - S7 Spike and BV Spike have a playground chat


TITLE: There but for Grace  
AUTHOR: Ten  
RATING: PG  
PAIRING: discussion of Spike/Baby and Spike/Buffy  
SUMMARY: AU Babyverse - S7 Spike and BV Spike have a playground chat  
SPOILERS: Season 7, Episode 2 (Beneath You) - sort of, not really  
DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to the god that is Joss Whedon (all hail and bow low before him), and WB, UPN, Mutant Enemy and some other people, but not me. The Babyverse belongs to Ebony Silvers, who is the goddess of all things Baby  
  
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Spike sat on the swing in the darkened park, moving slightly, mostly from the faint breeze. The night enveloped him like a comforting blanket, cool and warm at the same time, the comfortingly familiar presence of the moon and stars dancing on his skin and hair as well as lighting droplets like diamonds on random pieces of the silent, metallic play equipment.  
  
"How did you do it?" His voice was laced with pain, the frustration of so many years of wanting what he could not have, and even now, after the drastic changes, still unable to have what he most wanted.   
  
"How did I do what?"  
  
"Escape her. How did you purge yourself of wanting her, needing her, of her very possession of you?"  
  
"I didn't." His mirror image took a long drag off his cigarette, and then looked back at him with honesty in his eyes and no real answers.  
  
The two Spikes sat side by side with almost identical postures in the gently swaying swings. One was newly blonde, scabbed over hash marks over his left breast just peeking out through the top of his open-neck shirt. The other one had only a hint of blonde tips to his hair. Though physically no older, he had the confident carriage of more experience and the wisdom to know that he really didn't have the answers.  
  
"What's she done now?" Smoke circled the both of them with a hazy veil of nicotine.  
  
The blonder Spike held his brother's eye for a moment then turned his face up to the heavens, the moon glistening on his skin and catching the brilliant blue of his eyes just right to the point he seemed celestial himself.  
  
"I can't do this. I really can't."   
  
"Yes you can," the older, wiser Spike reassured him.  
  
"No, really, I can't. I've had enough. I want it over. I can't take any more from her, from her judgments, from her friends, from the voices screamin' in my head." He looked back at his other self. "But you broke away. How did you do it?"  
  
He stubbed out his cigarette with his boot then looked down at the ring on his left hand. "I didn't do it alone, mate, you know that. Were it not for her, I'd still be where you are."  
  
"But she didn't come to me."  
  
"I know, mate, I know." They sat in silence for what seemed an interminable time before he spoke again. "What did Buffy do now?"  
  
"It's not what she did, it's what I've done. I ..… went to a demon … wanted to give her what she deserves … a whole man … become a man she could love." He paused, kicking the pea gravel beneath his feet, then he looked up at his mirror image for a moment. "You don't know? You don't have the sight anymore?"  
  
"Mate, I've told you, I could only see through about spring last year. Anything that happened after that is a bleedin' mystery to me." He lit two cigarettes, handing one to his younger self.  
  
"Bother," Spike sighed as he took a long drag from the offered cig. "I got my bloody soul back is what happened. Bloody inconvenient."  
  
He looked away, suddenly a mixture of shame and anger, but the words kept tumbling from his mouth unchecked. He knew this man, more than anyone, understood.  
  
"The soul … it hurts. The faces, the voices, the … deeds done, they hang in front of me like a freakish art gallery, an exhibit of violence and despair and hatred and apathy. Seein' 'em I could take if I didn't have to listen to them so much, and if I didn't have to feel that stone of guilt that hangs around my neck like Jacob Marley's chain." He glanced at the other for a moment.   
  
A darker eyebrow rose slightly. "I see. And what was our dear Buffy's reaction?"   
  
"The usual. Denial. Suspicion. Broken furniture."  
  
The Spikes nodded in tandem.   
  
"Yeah, that would be our little Buffy." He sighed, that confident air working its way into Spike's unyielding lungs. "You have choices, mate, just like we all do." He was firm, convincing, strong. Spike couldn't help but admire the way he could do that.  
  
"Please, enlighten me." An edge of frustration still hung around the edges of every comment, but he was willing to listen to any solution his counterpart had to offer. After all, he had escaped, and in doing that changed the course of his unlife and found the woman of his dreams. The woman of anyone's dreams.  
  
"You love her, right?"  
  
Younger Spike nodded. "I bloody wish I didn't, but yeah, mate, I love her."  
  
"Then you have to let her find that out for herself as well as for you."  
  
Blonde eyebrows squinted together. "I've told her. How can she not know? As much as we've been through, as much as …. " He stopped and sent a confused glance to his friend and brother again.  
  
"You have to tell her, plainly and simply, exactly how you feel, that you went through the gates of Hell to make yourself into what she wanted, but that you won't force yourself on her."  
  
The younger man cringed a little at the term.  
  
"You have to let her find out for herself, mate, if you are what she wants or if there is some other man who makes Goldilocks' hair curl. And even if she does find someone else and then comes back to you, you have to welcome her back into your arms as if she never left."  
  
"But …."  
  
"She'll come back eventually, trust me. And when she does she'll be yours forever. But she has to find out for herself."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
The older Spike suddenly looked older. Something about the tilt of his head held a sadness that was so deeply hidden that it rarely showed. Tonight, it betrayed him.  
  
He stared into the red ember of his burning cigarette. "Because you were meant to be with her."   
  
"And you know this because …. "  
  
For the first time, each Spike looked hard into the face of the other.  
  
"I know this because I was meant to be with her. I can still feel it, buried deep inside me, something unused and still wrapped in butcher paper, like long-forgotten meat at the bottom of a freezer. We were supposed to be together, and we're not. Things happened, situations changed, new people came into our lives. We chose the lives we have now. It doesn't diminish those we love now, but there is something inside of me which will always belong to her no matter what I do, and no matter that we never experienced even one touch that you and she did." He took in a long, unneeded breath. "She will feel incomplete without you, as if something still needs to be done. Be patient."  
  
"Bloody Hell," the other murmured with a sigh.  
  
Then the cool, night air fell silent with only the occasional squeak of the swing chain between them.  
  
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Spike woke to Baby in his arms, nestled into his chest, the scent of her hair filling his nostrils. He breathed her in, let her fill him with the gratitude and sense of wholeness that over these long, sometimes agonizing years, she had brought him. He understood now. As painful as it was to admit, he understood how the world had turned slightly a-kilter and mated some who were not supposed to be. His heart squeezed just a little. He could never give her up completely, but he had to let her find her own way. He had to let her love like she needed to, and he had to be there when she returned.   
  
When she wakes, he told himself, I'll let her go to him. It's time. He knew, he could feel it in the cold depths of his still-aching soul, that she was to belong to someone else in this life, and because of circumstances it didn't happen. They wouldn't or couldn't change things, but if he didn't let her feel him, she would always be incomplete, and he hated that more than anything. He wanted her to have that happiness, that fullness that he suspected he would never truly feel now. They were wonderful together, he and Baby; he would always want and need her above all others. They were consorts, mates, and that would never change. But he could not consign her to a life that held an empty, hollow, unfilled place when that piece of her heart could still be gratified and stroked except by the interference of his own pride.  
  
In the morning he would tell her. In the morning he would help her pack and kiss her and embrace her and stroke her hair. In the morning he would send her to René for as long as she needed to be with him. 


End file.
